VANCOUVER (CANADA), February 23 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The Canadian couple of Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir won figure skating gold in the dance category, putting on a great show in front of their fans and ending 34 years of European domination in the discipline on a day in Vancouver without Spanish participation. .

Virtue and Moir danced to the tune of Mahler's Symphony No. 5 and brought the audience at the Pacific Coliseum to their feet as they received scores from the judges, climbing to first place on the podium with 221.57 points.

Americans Meryl Davis and Charlie White had to win the silver medal, by 5.83 points; while the world champions, Russians Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin, who were favorites before the Games, had to settle for bronze, after criticism of their performance in the original dance phase held on Sunday.

Since ice dancing's debut at the 1976 Olympics, Russian or Soviet couples have won all but two gold medals. The British Jayne Torvill and Christopher Dean (1984) and the French Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat (2002) are the two other winners.

On the other hand, Germany won gold in cross-country skiing in the team sprint final, after overtaking Sweden in the last of six laps of the course, who led almost the entire race and had to settle for money.

In a thrilling final, the German team took victory with a time of 18:03.7, just six tenths ahead of the Swedish team, which included the newest Olympic 10 kilometer freestyle champion, Charlotte Kalla. Russia closed the podium with the bronze medal.

NORTHUG WINS ITS FIRST OLYMPIC GOLD.

In the men's event, the gold medal went to Norway, who also came back in the final round to beat Germany and Russia, who won the silver and bronze medals respectively.

Norwegian Petter Northug, who has dominated this sport in recent seasons, finally won his first Olympic gold medal alongside Oeystein Pettersen. Northug was the architect of the comeback in the last of six laps that led Norway to victory with a time of 19:01, while the German team took silver in a finish that required a ” photo finish”.

Finally, Austria confirmed the predictions that gave it the role of favorite and won gold in the team ski jumping event, opening a podium completed by Germany, silver, and Norway, the bronze.

The Austrian team had the top four jumpers in the world rankings and showed their superiority by comfortably dominating the competition to retain the gold they won four years ago at the Turin Games, with a total of 1107.9 points .

For their part, the German team scored 1035.8 and won silver ahead of Norway, who were close with a score of 1030.3. The Swiss Simon Ammann, winner of the two individual events in Vancouver, did not compete in this team modality, since the Swiss team only has two jumpers at these Games.